With yellow rings of greasepaint framing her sparkling dark eyes, and streaks of blue and red covering the rest of her face, Tshidi Manye reaches an arm out and bellows an announcement in Zulu: “Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba.”

“There comes a king ...”

For the past nine years, Manye has been greeting audiences to Broadway’s “The Lion King” with this line, which starts the musical’s first song, “Circle of Life.” But Manye, who is originally from Johannesberg, South Africa, and lives in New Jersey, ended her run as Rafiki last week.

She has traded places with Buyi Zama, an actress who has been a part of the show’s touring production for 11 years. The performers know each other from the small performing arts community in which they grew up and keep in touch regularly. Talking on the phone recently, they realized that Manye wanted to travel and Zama was yearning to make her Broadway debut.

“Even though we’ve never worked together, I feel like I’ve known her for a very, very long time because, somehow, we’ve been living parallel lives,” Zama says.

When Disney agreed to the women’s plan to switch casts, Zama mentioned to Manye that she would have to find a place to live. Manye had a plan to handle that, too — and now Zama will be living in her house in Glen Ridge while she performs at the Minskoff Theatre.

“For her, it was just such a no-brainer,” Zama says. “She’s such a loving, giving person.”

Manye, 49, left South Africa to be a part of the show’s Toronto production in 1999. She had no formal vocal training and had to learn how to sing softly, along with which side was stage right and which was stage left.

But she didn’t have to do much to research Rafiki, who, in the stage version of the animated movie, is a spiritual guide rather than a baboon. Rafiki, she says, is like a sangoma, a psychic integral to the community in South Africa; Manye has a niece who is training to become one.

A sangoma is able to see the future and connect to ancestors. In the show, Rafiki helps the lion Simba to understand the legacy that his father Mufasa has left.

Actually, Manye speaks seven of the 11 official languages of South Africa, including English, Zulu, Sotho and Xhosa, all of which are featured in “The Lion King.” Director Julie Taymor has made a point of using at least six South African performers in all productions.

Associate director John Stefaniuk, who agreed to the actresses’ swap, says that authenticity is essential to the show.

“What was so beautiful about the film is you’d see the beautiful landscapes and the animals of Africa,” he says.

“In the stage production, you’re swept away not only by the look of Africa but also the music and energy and culture.”

Manye and Zama were each chosen from about 1,000 applicants, Stefaniuk says.

“The thing I love most about Tshidi’s performances is she has such a beautiful sense of the sangoma character, this spiritual Mother Earth-type character,” he says.

“She acts as a narrator, the eyes for the audience. That sense of leadership makes her a real cornerstone to the Broadway production.”

By contrast, he says that the younger Zama provided a youthful exuberance and an incredible voice.

Growing up in Johannesberg, Manye honed her voice singing in church. Her mother wrote plays. Although she lived in the city, she regularly visited relatives in the rural areas that got pitch-black at night and traveled with paraffin lamps from one house to another — because a neighbor might be half a mile away.

The show’s opening ceremony reminds her of stories she heard growing up about parties held by kings, with a town crier figure who alerted everyone of the news — as Rafiki does with her opening line about the celebration of the birth of Simba.

“The lion, in our culture, represents the king,” she explains. “The leopard is a queen because of the beautiful spots that they have. In every kingdom, the queen has a leopard skin.”

The perpetually lit-up Times Square could have been overwhelming, but Manye had long dreamed of seeing the place she knew from the movies. When she arrived with her son Mpho, Manye says he was “the most excited person I have ever seen.”

The family first lived in Washington Heights, but the noise of partying and fighting neighbors kept Mpho up at night, and when Tshidi heard a gunshot, she considered it her signal to move. She chose Glen Ridge for the education her son, who is now 17, would receive in public school and enjoyed the ample space in her apartment. Mpho will meet up with her on tour in Tulsa after he finishes school.

As for Zama, “The Lion King” has already taken her to London, Sydney and Shanghai. She also performed the show in South Africa, where she was relieved to find audiences appreciative. It wasn’t just the mystery of having certain words in a foreign language that drew crowds in other places, it was the work itself and what she was doing.

She’s very excited about her debut and a little nervous about New York, which she has been told is “a different beast altogether.”

“When I was younger, my dream was to see the world” she says. “I’ve been to so many places with the show, I’m living my dream.”